25 June 2012

Index to BillionGraves now at www.familysearch.org

As the collection of databases in the Historical Records section of www.familysearch.org continues to grow, some amazing records for genealogists are becoming more readable available. A great example of this is the new addition of a name index to the Billiongraves.com website.
BillionGraves is a database of records and images from cemeteries around the world, all tagged with GPS locations, making the gravesites easy to find. The BillionGraves site includes images of the headstones as collected by an amazing group of volunteers.

The search tool for the Billiongraves website is very user friendly. Once the names are found in the database at familysearch, the actual image can be found at BillionGraves. The search tool allows the researcher to filter by name, location and years. I performed a search for Abraham Katz who I knew was buried in New York.

The results for Abraham Katz included the person I was searching for. He died on 25 August 1931 and is buried at the Mount Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, New York. The quality of the image of his headstone was very good.

The BillionGraves database is a great addition to the FamilySearch site, and is another valuable source for those researching their Jewish ancestors.

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Why the Knowles Collection?

From an early age I have been trying to find as much information as I could about my gggrandfather, Morris DavidRosenbaum, a Polish Jew. In my search and through my work as a Reference Consultant in the British Research unit at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, I have compiled records of The Jewish people. This collection, linking Jewish families, is available free to all. Hopefully, people will come together to share the stories of their own families.

Size of the databases (28 Jan 2015)

Jews of British Isles 208,349Jews of Europe380,637Jews of North America489,400Jews of South America and Caribbean21,351Jews of Africa & Orient37,618Jews of South Pacific21,518

Total 1,158,873

Growth and Change

In the 7 years since the Knowles Collection was first published, the numbers have climbed from just over 7,500 to over 1,000,000as of April of 2014. So many of our ancestors left their native lands for new homes. Because of that movement the collection will now be in 6 different databases. All of them will be under the Knowles Collection umbrella. They are Jewsof The British Isles; Jews of the North America; Jews of Europe; Jews of South America and the Caribbean; and Jews of Africa and the Orient and the newest one, Jews of the Southern Pacific.. This is a great indication of how universal our families are, and of how much still needs to be done.